Transcription
“THE DOGMAS AND RITUALS OF HIGH MAGICK”BY ELIPHAS LEVICHAPTER 4 – “THE TETRAGRAMMATON”
IV o DTHE TETRAGRAMGEBURAH CHESED PORTA LIBRARUM ELEMENTAIN Nature there are two forces producing equilibrium, and these three constitute a single law. Here, then, is the triad resumed in unity, and by adding the conception of unity to that of the triad we are bought to the tetrad, the first squareand perfect number, the source of all numerical combinations and the principle ofall forms. Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution: such are the four philosophical operations of the human mind. Discussion conciliates negation with affirmation by rendering them necessary to each other. In the same way, the philosophicaltriad, emanating from the antagonism of the duad, is completed by the tetrad, thefour-square basis of all truth. According to consecrated dogma, there are ThreePersons in God, and these Three constitute one only Deity. Three and one providethe conception of four, because unity is required to explain the three. Hence, inalmost all languages, the name of God consists of four letters, and in Hebrewthese four are really three, one of them being repeated twice, that which expressesthe Word and the creation of the Word.Two affirmations make two corresponding denials either possible or necessary.The fact of being is affirmed, and that of nothingness is denied. Affirmation asWord produces affirmation as realization or incarnation of the Word, and each ofthese affirmations corresponds to the denial of its opposite. Thus, in the opinionof the Kabalists, the name of the demon or of evil is composed of the same lettersas the Name of God or goodness, but spelt backwards. This evil is the lost reflection or imperfect mirage of light in shadow. But all which exists, whether of goodor evil, of light or darkness, exists and manifests by the tetrad. The affirmation ofunity supposes the number four, unless it turns in unity itself as in a vicious circle.So also the triad, as we have observed already, is explained by the duad andresolved by the tetrad, which is the squared unity of even numbers and the quadrangular base of the cube, regarded as unity of construction, solidity and measure.The Kabalistic Tetragram, JODHEVA, expresses God in humanity and humanityin God. The four astronomical cardinal points are, relatively to us, the yea and thenay of light – East and West – and the yea and nay of warmth – South and North.As we have said already, according to the sole dogma of the Kabalah, that whichis in visible Nature reveals that which is in the domain of invisible Nature, or secondary causes are in strict proportion and analogous to the manifestations of theFirst Cause. So is this First Cause revealed invariably by the Cross – that unitymade up of two, divided one by the other in order to produce four; that key to the18
THE TETRAGRAM19mysteries of India and Egypt, The Tau of the patriarchs, the divine sign of Osiris,the Stauros of the Gnostics, the keystone of the temple, the symbol of OccultMasonry; the Cross, central point of the junction of the right angles of two infinitetriangles; the Cross, which in the French language seems to be the first root andfundamental substantive of the verb to believe and the verb to grow, thus combining the conceptions of science, religion and progress.The Great Magical Agent manifests by four kinds of phenomena, and has beensubjected to the experiments of profane science under four names – caloric, light,electricity, magnetism. It has received also the names of TETRAGRAM, INRI,AZOTH, ETHER, OD, Magnetic Fluid, Soul of the Earth, Lucifer, etc. The GreatMagical Agent is the fourth emanation of the life-principle, of which the sun is thethird form – see the initiates of the school of Alexandria and the dogma of HermesTrismegistus. In this way the eye of the world, as the ancients called it, is themirage of the reflection of God, and the soul of the earth is a permanent glance ofthe sun which the earth conceives and guards by impregnation. The moon concurs in this impregnation of the earth by reflecting a solar image during the night,so that Hermes was right when he said of the Great Agent: “The sun is its father,the moon its mother.” Then he adds: “The wind has borne it in the belly thereof,”because the atmosphere is the recipient and, as it were, the crucible of the solarrays, by means of which there forms that living image of the sun which penetratesthe whole earth, fructifies it and determines all that is produced on its surface byits emanations and permanent currents, analogous to those of the sun itself. Thissolar agent subsists by two contrary forces – one of attraction and one of projection, whence Hermes says that it ascends and descends eternally. The force ofattraction is always fixed at the centre of bodies, that of projection in their outlines or at their surface. By this dual force all is created and all preserved. Itsmotion is a rolling up and an enrolling which are successive and unlimited, or,rather, Simultaneous and perpetual, by spirals of opposite movements whichnever meet. It is the same movement as that of the sun, at once attracting andrepelling all the planets of its system. To be acquainted with the movement of thisterrestrial sun in such a manner as to be able to apply its currents and directthem, is to have accomplished the Great Work and to be master of the world.Armed with such a force you may make yourself adored: the crowd will believethat you are God.The absolute secret of this direction has been in the possession of certain men,and can yet be discovered. It is the Great Magical Arcanum, depending on anincommunicable axiom and on an instrument which is the grand and uniqueathanor of the highest grade of Hermetists. The incommunicable axiom isenclosed kabalistically in the four letters of the Tetragram, arranged in thefollowing manner:
20The Doctrine of Transcendental MagicIn the letters of the words AZOTH and INRI written kabalistically; and in themonogram of Christ as embroidered on the Labarum, which the Kabalist Postelinterprets by the word ROTA, whence the adepts have formed their Taro or Tarot,by the repetition of the first letter, thus indicating the circle, and suggesting thatthe word is read backwards. All magical science is comprised in the knowledge ofthis secret. To know it and have the courage to use it is human omnipotence; toreveal it to a profane person is to lose it; to reveal it even to a disciple is to abdicate in favour of that disciple, who, henceforward, possesses the right of life anddeath over his master – I am speaking from the magical standpoint – and will certainly slay him for fear of dying himself. But this has nothing in common withdeeds qualified as murder in criminal legislation; the practical philosophy whichis the basis and point of departure for our laws does not recognize the facts ofbewitchment and of occult influences. We touch here upon extraordinary revelations, and are prepared for the unbelief and derision of incredulous fanaticism;voltairean religion has also its fanatics, pace the great shades who must now belurking sullenly in the vaults of the Pantheon, while Catholicism, strong ever in itspractices and prestige, chants the Office overhead.The perfect word, that which is adequate to the thought which it expresses,always contains virtually or supposes a tetrad: the idea, with its three necessaryand correlated forms, then the image of the thing expressed, with the three termsof the judgement which qualifies it. When I say: “Being exists,” I affirm implicitlythat the void is nonexistent. A height, a breadth which the height subdivides longitudinally, a depth separated from the height by the intersection of the breadth,such is the natural tetrad, composed of two lines at right angles one to another.Nature has also four motions, products of two forces which sustain each other bytheir tendency in an opposite direction. Now, the law which rules bodies is analogous to that which governs minds, and that which governs minds is the very manifestation of God's secret – that is to say, of the mystery of the creation. Imagine awatch having two parallel springs, with an engagement which makes them work
THE TETRAGRAM21in an opposite direction so that the one in unwinding winds up the other. In thisway, the watch will wind up itself, and you will have discovered perpetual motion.The engagement should be at two ends and of extreme accuracy. Is this beyondattainment? We think not. But when it is discovered the inventor will understandby analogy all the secrets of Nature PROGRESS IN DIRECT PROPORTION TO RESISTANCE The absolute movement of life is thus the perpetual consequence of twocontrary tendencies which are never opposed. When one seems to yield to theother, it is like a spring which is winding up, and you may expect a reaction, themoment and characteristics of which it is quite possible to foresee and determine.Hence at the period of the greatest Christian fervour was the reign of ANTICHRISTknown and predicted. But Antichrist will prepare and determine the SecondAdvent and final triumph of the Man-God. This again is a rigorous and kabalistical conclusion contained in the Gospel premises. Hence the Christian prophecycomprises a fourfold revelation: I. Fall of the old world and triumph of the Gospelunder the First Advent; 2. Great apostasy and coming of Antichrist; 3. Fall ofAntichrist and recurrence to Christian ideas; 4. Definitive triumph of the Gospel,or Second Advent, designated under the name of the Last Judgement. This fourfold prophecy contains, as will be seen, two affirmations and two negations, theidea of two ruins or universal deaths and of two resurrections; for to every conception which appears upon the social horizon an East and a West, a Zenith and aNadir, may be ascribed without fear of error. Thus is the Philosophical Cross thekey of prophecy, and all gates of science may be opened with the pantacle ofEzekiel, the centre of which is a star formed by the interlacement of two crosses.Does not human life present itself also under these four phases or successivetransformations – birth, life, death, immortality? And remark here that theimmortality of the soul, necessitated as a complement of the tetrad, is kabalistically proved by analogy, which is the sole dogma of truly universal religion, as it isthe key of science and the universal law of Nature. As a fact, death can be nomore an absolute end than birth is a real beginning. Birth proves the preexistenceof the human being, since nothing is produced from nothing, and death provesimmortality, since being can no more cease from being than nothingness can ceaseto be nothingness. Being and nothingness are two absolutely irreconcilable ideas,with this difference, that the idea of nothingness, which is altogether negative,issues from the very idea of being, whence even nothingness cannot be understoodas an absolute negation, whilst the notion of being can never be put in comparisonwith that of nothingness, and still less can it come forth therefrom. To say that theworld has been produced out of nothing is to advance a monstrous absurdity. Allthat is proceeds from what has been, and consequently nothing that is can evermore cease to be. The succession of forms is produced by the alternatives of movement; they are the phenomena of life which replace without destroying oneanother. All things change; nothing perishes. The sun does not die when it van-
22The Doctrine of Transcendental Magicishes from the horizon; even the most fluidic forms are immortal, subsistingalways in the permanence of their raison d'être, which is the combination of lightwith the aggregated potencies of the molecules of the first substance. Hence theyare preserved in the astral fluid, and can be evoked and reproduced according tothe will of the sage, as we shall see when treating of second sight and the evocation of memories in necromancy or other magical works. We shall return also tothe Great Magical Agent in the fourth chapter of the Ritual, where we shall complete our indications of the characteristics of the Great Arcanum, and of themeans of recovering this tremendous power.'Here let us add a few words on the four magical elements and elementary spirits. The magical elements are: in alchemy, Salt, Sulphur, Mercury and Azoth; inKabalah, the Macroprosopus, the Microprosopus and the two Mothers; in hieroglyphics, the Man, Eagle, Lion and Bull; in old physics, according to vulgar namesand notions, air, water, earth and fire. But in magical science we know that wateris not ordinary water, fire is not simply fire, etc. These expressions conceal a morerecondite meaning. Modern science has decomposed the four elements of theancients and reduced them to a number of so-called simple bodies. That which issimple, however, is the primitive substance properly so-called; there is thus onlyone material element, which manifests always by the tetrad in its forms. We shalltherefore preserve the wise distinction of elementary appearances admitted by theancients, and shall recognize air, fire, earth and water as the four positive and visible elements of Magic.The subtle and the gross, the swift and slow solvent, or the instruments of heatand cold, constitute, in occult physics, the two positive and negative principles ofthe tetrad, and should be thus tabulated:Thus, air and earth represent the male principle; fire and water are referable tothe female principle, since the Philosophical Cross of pantacles, as affirmedalready, is a primitive and elementary hieroglyph of the lingam of the gymnosophists. To these four elementary forms correspond the four following philosophical ideas Spirit, Matter, Motion, Rest. As a fact, all science is comprised in theunderstanding of these four things, which alchemy has reduced to three – theAbsolute, the Fixed and the Volatile – referred by the Kabalah to the essential ideaof God, Who is absolute reason, necessity and liberty, a threefold notion expressedin the occult books of the Hebrews. Under the names of KETHER, CHOKMAH andBINAH for the Divine World; of TIPHERETH, CHESED and GEBURAH in the moral
THE TETRAGRAM23world, and of JESOD, HOD and NETSAH in the physical world, which, together withthe moral, is contained in the idea of the Kingdom or MALKUTH, we shall explainin the tenth chapter this theogony as rational as it is sublime.Now, created spirits, being called to emancipation by trial, are placed fromtheir birth between these four forces, two positive and two negative, and have it intheir power to affirm or deny good, to choose life or death. To discover the fixedpoint, that is, the moral centre of the Cross, is the first problem which is giventhem to resolve; their initial conquest must be that of their own liberty. Theybegin by being drawn, some to the North, others to the South; some to the right,others to the left; and in so far as they are not free, they cannot have the use ofreason, nor can they take flesh otherwise than in animal forms. These unemancipated spirits, slaves of the four elements, are those which the Kabalists call elementary daimons, and they people the elements which correspond to their state ofservitude. Sylphs, undines, gnomes and salamanders really exist therefore, somewandering and seeking incarnation, others incarnate and living on this earth.These are vicious and imperfect men. We shall return to this subject in the fifteenth chapter, which treats of enchantments and demons.That is also an occult tradition by which the ancients were led to admit theexistence of four ages in the world, only it was not made known to the vulgar thatthese ages are successive and are renewed, like the four seasons of the year. Thus,the golden age has passed, and it is yet to come. This, however, belongs to thespirit of prophecy, and we shall speak of it in the ninth chapter, which is concerned with the initiate and the seer. If we now add the idea of unity to the tetrad,we shall have, together and separately, the conceptions of the divine synthesis andanalysis, the god of the initiates and that of the profane. Here the doctrinebecomes more popular, as it passes from the domain of the abstract: the grandhierophant intervenes.
cal conclusion contained in the Gospel premises. Hence the Christian prophecy comprises a fourfold revelation: I. Fall of the old world and triumph of the Gospel under the First Advent; 2. Great apostasy and coming of Antichrist; 3. Fall of Antichrist and recurrence to Christian ideas; 4. Definitive triumph of the Gospel,
